


Demeter's Lament

by Hamiltonian



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-22
Updated: 2011-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-23 22:59:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hamiltonian/pseuds/Hamiltonian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hass has never been able to accept the inevitable. Death is no exception.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demeter's Lament

Hass has never apologized in his life.

He's never seen a reason to, having never done anything that he felt particularly remorseful over. Certainly he'd made mistakes, but who hadn't? None of them had harmed anyone besides himself on occasion, and he always learned from them. He relished taking a misstep every now and then - they made life more interesting.

But this was different. This was the existence of four children, three other guardians, seven people that until now had been strangers to him in his hands. All because he'd dug up some ruins - or was it because the game existed that he'd dug it up? Sometimes he had no patience for the intricacies of paradox space.

It didn't really matter at this point anyway. The others would be given time to raise their charges and ready them for the coming of their destinies. Hass would not be given that luxury; he would step into the Medium, fling himself forward in time in order to ensure that the session had a ray of hope.

He hadn't told the others what he'd seen in the programming - how could he? It would be impossible for them to accept that all they'd worked for was over before it even began. It was difficult enough for him to accept it. But Hass was a clever man, and it was obvious even from the coding that there was something fundamentally wrong with the game that would be produced. It was...dead.

Even dead ground could be made to bear fruit with the right cultivation, however, and Hass was nothing if not stubborn. So he would cede the rearing of Jade to Becquerel (and he knew he would do a wonderful job. he was, after all, a good dog and best friend.) and turn his attention to patching up what he could of the reality she would inherit.

And once that was finished, he would return here to die.

There was no way around it, although he certainly had tried to find one. Just another loop to close in order to keep the world operating smoothly. One more check box to tick on the preparation list for another universe. Something about that stung, but Hass had finally accepted it with the acknowledgment that giving up his own life would preserve the children's.

Still, he wished that could have been there to watch her grow. Jade was such an energetic child, so eager to learn about her world. If time had permitted it he imagined that they'd have certainly had a wonderful time plundering the island together as he taught her how to set up an archaeological grid system.

As things were he doubted that she'd even remember him by the time she turned nine. Small children's memories often grew cloudy with time in that way. A sad turn of events, but nothing he could do about it now.

Nothing he could do. Hass had never accepted those words in his life, had dedicated himself to disproving it at every chance he got. It had taken him many hours and quite a few broken chemistry sets to school his mind to give in to the inevitable, and even now he felt it rebel at the worst possible moments.

Moments like this one, his dead little girl in his arms and the cacophony of falling debris all around him. He pays no heed to the chaos, focused entirely on gently laying her out in the captain's room of his ship. Although the life in her is gone he can still see the strength that once inhabited this body. She had been so very brave.

He crosses her arms over her chest, smoothing the wrinkles that emerge in the sleeves with a hand. For a time Hass simply stares at her still face, searching for the words that he'd never needed.

"My dear, I am truly sorry."


End file.
